Occasio

A Wild Pentecost

On May 31 North Fresno Church celebrated Pentecost Sunday. As worship leader for our contemporary service I took a risk with our little conservative congregation and it seems to have worked.

As everyone came into the sanctuary they were handed a red, orange or yellow balloon (colors of fire). During the first two songs each attender blew up his/her balloon and then took a wide-tipped marker and wrote on a balloon completing the following sentence: "Come Holy Spirit and...." On the chorus of the third song ("Come and Fill Me Up") we launched our balloons as prayers to the heavens. God's breath to our breath and back again!

What ensued was a wild, chaotic, unpredictable balloon fest -- a real celebration of the Spirit. Perfect!

After a crazy free-for-all of 200+ bouncy balloons, everybody grabbed one and then shared what was written on it as a way of meeting and greeting one another. The only problem we had was that we used "washable" markers and they tended to smudge a bit. As a result, everyone's hands were inked with different colors. That was an easy explanation. "You've been marked with the colors of the Spirit," I said.

Check out this video if you're interested in the vantage point of someone in the congregation. It might take a few minutes to load.

It's hard to get in the door: Christians endorse torture?

"It's hard to get in the door" is a series of posts illustrating why those searching for Christ often have a hard time accepting the church. If you have been raised in the church, try imagining what this piece would look like if you had grown up in a world without it. If you are unfamiliar with the culture of church, this will probably seem pretty absurd. All comments are welcome!

Last week there was a report from a recent survey that indicated church goers are more committed to and approving of torture than those who don't go to church. The correlation was remarkable: the more likely one is to attend church, the more likely one is to say that torture of of terrorists is justifiable.

From the Pew Research Center:

The poll found that fifty-four percent of those who attend weekly services say the use of torture on terror suspects in order to gain important information can "often" or "sometimes" be justified. That's twelve percent higher than the 42 percent of those who seldom or never attend such services who say the same.

And guess which demographic group is most likely to support the use of torture? White evangelical Protestants - sixty-two percent of them find it justifiable.

Non-Christians certainly see a contradiction here. Founded on the legacy of a man who was convicted of terrorism against the Roman government and Jewish establishment and then tortured to death by way of beatings and crucifixion, a majority of regular church-going Christians still support torture in greater numbers than those who do not have any religious affiliation. Does this mean that atheists end up looking more Christian than the Christians? That's the way some will interpret it.

On a related note, have you seen the recently released cover pages Donald Rumsfeld used on daily Pentagon Iraq briefings to the president? Carefully chosen verses proof-text select war photos giving the impression that America's war in the Mideast is a holy crusade. Click here for the full slide show of images.

Here are a few selected documents.

 

 

 

Need yet one more reason why non-Christians might like Christ but not want the church? Check out this video of soldiers in Afghanistan carrying a gun in one hand and a Bible in the other.

It's hard to get in the door....

Psalm 23 provides clues for dealing with uncertain times

Here's a brief article I just published through Fresno Pacific University's "Scholars Speak" feature. Click on he link below if you want to read the rest of the piece.

The most famous ancient Hebrew poem is Psalm 23, “The Lord is my shepherd…” and the main context for its reading is funerals. But like the most popular prayer (“Our Father who art in heaven”) and the most popular verse (“For God so loved the world”) this psalm is often recited without much reflection. Though it may be customary to use Psalm 23 at a memorial service, it is even more appropriate as an expression of hope and life in the troubled here-and-now.

Read the full article here.

U2 St. Patrick's Day Party at the Neufeld's

Bono says that every good Irishman knows Lent ends on St. Patrick's Day.

We'll I'm not sure about the theology of that statement, but we're calling all friends and students who are U2 fans/crazies/theologians to an Irish meal. We'll listen to the new album, yak about favorite songs and try to answer whether there is or isn't a line on the horizon.

Interested in joining? Let me know.

BTW, here's the standard St. Patrick's Day greeting from U2 when they were just kids. Happy St. Paddy's day!

No Line on the Horizon: =

  

"...on earth as it is in heaven."

This is the album cover for U2's new release, No Line on the Horizon. Beatuiful.

Photograph by Hiroshi Sugimoto.

FPU Ministry Forum with Ray Bakke

I’m blogging from the annual Ministry Forum at Fresno Pacific University today. Our keynote speaker is Ray Bakke, a pastor, teacher, and professor of urban theology. Ray is the chancellor of the Bakke Graduate University. Our theme for the forum is “One Church, One City.” Ray is a brilliant theologian with provocative and relevant thoughts for the urban church. Rather than editorialize, I thought I’d just share a cluster of ideas he’s been sharing today. These are loose paraphrases of his comments.

In 1800 2%, 1900 8%, 2000 50% of the planet lives in cities
Cities are growing by 100,000 per day; ½ by birth, ½ by relocation

Ray’s most shocking experience was to watch churches flee the cities in the 60s. Those who sang “red and yellow, black and white” bought into “white flight.”

Christians fled L.A. and Chicago and met in Colorado Springs

Evangelicals think they can’t survive in the cities because there’s a belief that gardens are good and cities are evil; there is an exodus theology in play

In the bible: 1250 texts regarding the city, 141 individual cities mentioned. Ez 16: cities are families (this is the part of focusing on the family that Dobson has left out). Biblical idea of family - hooked to geography and history.

Paul’s use of contextualization in the city:
Philippi - Lydia and women in an upper class city lead the church
Athens - quoted Greeks at Mars Hill
Corinth - he made tents, the crossroads the marketplace/commerce (urban and rural)
Ephesus - went to synagogue to dialogue (Socratic method)
Paul adjusts his message, methods and meaning places to meet people where they where
A theology as big as the city includes all of these

Luther and Calvin had a marketplace theology
Common Grace: taking care of schools, hospitals, public sector
Saving Grace: in the churches paid for by tithes
Tax money or tithe money - it’s all God’s
Why have Christians removed themselves from Common Grace theology? (This comes largely through American revivalism and personal piety movements)

God is bringing the nations to the city neighborhoods
The Lord of history is bringing the nations to California - why is he doing this? what does this mean?
This is not the time to flee the city in favor of gated communities. We need common grace.

Four worlds people live in: biological, geographical, relational, recreational worlds
The task of the pastor is not to get 10% growth this year but to get congregants into their four worlds as missionaries
“Evangelism is scratching people where they itch in the name of Jesus”
“Church growth” is about getting a hundred people into four hundred worlds touching thousands of people
Church Growth strategies have typically encouraged a pastor to build a church in his/her own image and then attract others to it creating homogeneous cultures
“I had to decide if I wanted to be a come-structured pastor or a go-structured pastor”

Form the second century in Epistle to Diognetus: what the soul is to the body, the Christian is to the city

Jesus died in the city and the church was born in the city at Pentecost

Does any of this get you thinking about Christianity, ministry and the urban context? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

My favorite Super Bowl commercial

Somedays....

Another day at Fuller

Day 3 -- Today I presented my dissertation proposal. I was on the hot seat in front of my colleagues and doctoral advisers for about 80 minutes. Pastor James Bergen was able to make it down from Fresno to show support, ask questions and help me with the presentation. Thanks James!

My proposal was dismantled fairly thoroughly, but a number of elements survived. I’ll now have to work hard at reshaping the eleven-page document and then resubmitting it. In general, I’m proposing to help North Fresno Church begin to think about diffusing the kinds of things we’ve been doing in the church neighborhood into the neighborhoods of individual congregants. We have engaged in such wonderful missional practices on North Fresno Street, we need to understand how members of NFC can engage their own neighbors. My plan is to gather several families from different areas of town and begin some simple experiments with missional practices on their blocks. The practices might include walking and reading a neighborhood, Appreciative Inquiry interviews, lectio divina in their homes, and the practice of hospitality. The actual practices will be decided on by the families who covenant together to participate in this project. One of the outcomes will be a Sunday school class that is taught by the participants. Hopefully that will be a way to pass on what we have learned.

A lot of the details are missing because my next task is to redesign my proposal and fill in the blanks. If you would like to follow my progress or are from NFC and would like to participate in this project just let me know. Say a prayer for me to if you think about it as well.

My stay at Fuller

I’m spending the week at Fuller Theological Seminary enrolled in the final seminar of my DMin program. I have completed all of the course work and am now ABD – All But Dissertation. The main task this week is for each of us doctoral candidates to present the first draft of our dissertation proposal, then listen to our colleagues and doctoral advisers deconstruct and tear it apart.

Day 1 – I arrived Sunday late afternoon after a fairly uneventful drive. I had fun listening to some of my old albums-now-on-CD, and I even got to hear the broadcast of Dinuba Mennonite Brethren Church. The five hour drive is never a problem because I love listening to music and radio. The day ended with a meal for the ten of us students hosted by our doctoral advisers, Mark Branson and Alan Roxburgh. We spent a couple of hours fellowshipping and catching up. I’m so blessed to have such wonderful colleagues, friends and conversation partners.

Day 2 – We started the day, as we always do, with lectio divina. Our passage for reflection this week is Acts 2. (For a brief description of this “dwelling in the Word” see my blog about last year’s Fuller experience here.) Acts 2 records the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. It’s full of rich imagery: violent wind, tongues of fire, miraculous languages, amazed people, a sermon, repentance, baptism and the birth of the first church. One of the things that we reflected on is the context for this message. The believers are gathered together and are driven out into the streets after receiving the Spirit. They immediately begin speaking the languages of others in the city. Jews from various areas had moved to Jerusalem, and even though they would have spoken Greek, the newly Spirit-filled believers speak to them in their own native languages. These people used to live in communities and territories that were established during the Babylonian exile. These are the descendants of the post-Persian exiles. It's amazing to see that the Spirit chooses to speak in the native tongues of the people.

With regard to this context, we must ask, Why did the apostles speak to them in their native languages and not Greek, the dominant language that they all would have understood anyway? What was God up to? What was God doing by including all these nationalities and languages in the emergence of his new church? Or, as the people in Jerusalem asked, “What does this mean?” Surely God was redefining his kingdom community to be inclusive and open. The believers were ministering the gospel of Jesus Christ as any missionary would, in the native languages of the people. Our challenge today: What would happen if we walked our neighborhoods asking some of the same fundamental questions: How can we speak the language of these people? What signs and wonders are already evident in the neighborhoods we live in? Might we be “amazed and perplexed” with what God is already doing and ask with the first-century Jews, “What does this mean?” There’s a lot more to unpack in this passage….

The remainder of the day was spent listening to two dissertation proposals and then discussing them. The dismantling and reconstructing of our proposals is the primary task of this week’s seminar. I’ll say more about that after I have my turn.

Get On Your Boots

Okay, gotta do a quick post on the new U2 song that was released today entitled "Get On Your Boots" from the soon-to-be released album No Line on the Horizon. Here are a few links:

Listen to the song on U2.com's site.

Listen to a better quality version on 103.7 "The Mountain" from Seattle. They're playing it every hour on the hour.

"Get On Your Boots" lyrics here at U2Wanderer.com.

If you missed the band's two songs at the We Are One Inaugural concert check out this YouTube video. "Not just an American Dream, also an Irish dream, a European dream, an African dream, an Israeli dream... and also, a Palestinian dream! Sing!!" "Blessings not just for the ones who kneel, luckily."

And then there's this cool candid video of the band practicing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Thanks to @U2 for posting this (Matt and team have been out of their minds giving us updates the last few days!). Here's the link (scroll down the page).

Finally, check out Beth Maynard's take on "Boots" along with a number of comments here. Below are some initial comments I threw out on her blog about the song.

"First impression: Bono's melody line in the verse draws me immediately back to the eighties with Escape Club's "Wild Wild West" (Forty-seven dead beats living in the back street/ North, east, west, south all in the same house...) Now I gotta work real hard at getting that outta my head.

Second impression: "Boots" sounds way better on 1037themountain.com (top of every hour today) than on U2.com's stream (VERY cluttered with a small stream and equally small speakers).

Third impression: juxtaposition throughout, in classic U2 form, but definitely feeding from a Pop-style "Vertigo". It feels like it takes off from the Jacknife Lee version, "and fear has taken over every thought". Also, reminds me of "Fast Cars."

Fourth impression: lot's of second person plural in this song. I'm hearing a plural "you" in the chorus. Kind of a "city on a hill" thing with glimpses of "Yahweh" and "City of Blinding Lights". Ancient Israel never understood the power of their beauty, presence and witness in the world- do we?

Fifth impression: I'm not focused on "the sound" as much as the cry to "let me in". I think people are hungry and desperate for a community of peace, and the very communities (i.e. church) that claim to have peace tend to negate it by their very presence. The theological point is this: if we were living in radical alternate communities of love as Christ's followers, people would be busting down the doors to experience it. And I can imagine 100,000 people in a stadium screaming "Let me in... Let me in...!" akin to the irony of joining voices for "I still haven't found what I'm looking for" or "I will sing, sing a new song".

But then again, I could be way off. Heck, it's art and that's what hit me initially. No doubt I'll see it differently in the future. Sorry for the long comment, I should've done a post."

MLK Day

I'm not sure if anyone's noticed but I've been gone for awhile. I've mostly been recovering from hepatitis but also catching up at school, starting a new semester, working on my doctoral studies, playing my mandolin and, very importantly, spending time with my family.

I'm getting ready for another doctoral seminar at Fuller Theological Seminary beginning next week (watch for posts from Fuller) so I've been reading in preparation. A recent text I worked through is by one of the best theologians of our day, John Howard Yoder. In his book, For the Nations: essays evangelical and public, Yoder (not "Yoda" as my nine-year old assumed!) picks up his familiar themes of peace, reconciliation, servanthood and justice, but applies them directly to the church as it lives in tension with its American culture. He suggests that the church's role as an alternate community, faithfully living out a biblical witness as first presented in the Hebrews and then lived out and fulfilled in the person of Christ, has enormous implications for our contemporary situation. All of his essays are twenty to thirty years old but find new life in the twenty-first century.

One of the essays is relevant for this day, the day we honor Martin Luther King, Jr. In "The Power Equation, the Place of Jesus, and the Politics of King" Yoder points out King's ability to have the same kind of faith that the Hebrews would have understood. In the book of Hebrews we read that "faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen" (11:1). It is this faith that led both our ancestors of the Old Testament and King to believe that suffering will bring about good, though that good might not be immediately evident. One of the critiques of the American Dream is that in its current manifestation it negates suffering and replaces it with a type of utilitarian power that is righteously wielded by those who somehow know right from wrong. This is not what King had in mind.

King understood that the suffering at hand was not entered into because it would foster the outcome he hoped for in his lifetime, but because it was the right thing to do. Pondering whether suffering is worthwhile even when the sufferer sees no signs of success, Yoder writes:

What is the validity of our cause when we are not winning? Does it change the affirmation of the human dignity of the adversary when (in the foreseeable future) the adversary will not be won over by our suffering love but keeps on unrepentantly oppressing? Does it reverse the pragmatic ethical commitment of the activist to truth telling, to breaking the law only in very exceptional circumstances, and to rigorous nonviolence, when those tactics achieve less?

Yoder notes that King often referred to the need for love, nonviolent resistance and suffering even when no particular fruit was immediately evident (which is why he continued to opt for "the power of suffering" instead of Malcolm X's "black power"). King:

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. (Nobel Peace Prize acceptance, December 1964)

The cross we bear precedes the crown we wear. To be a Christian one must take up his cross, with all of its difficulties and agonizing and tension-packed content and carry it until that very cross leaves its marks upon us and redeems us to that more excellent way which comes only through suffering. (National Conference on Religion and Race in Chicago, January 1963)

Yoder continues commenting on this view of faith and suffering:

If the Lamb is worthy to receive power, then the only rational worldview, in a cosmos where we have no control, will be apocalyptic. ...The Lord's coming "to judge," i.e., to set things right, will be soon, but not right now. It does not bypass our ongoing struggle; yet the criterion guiding us in the struggle is not whether we win, not whether we can implement lesser-evil calculations to get there, but whether we keep the faith.

So, I would ask the church, "What does it mean to be a faithful people, or to keep the faith?" "Why do we oppose suffering, or at least put up with it only when we see the product of our suffering at hand?"  "When will we understand that repaying good for evil is not simply proverbial, but the way the Creator has designed the universe to work?" "When will the church become the presence and foretaste of God's kingdom with regard to suffering?" Or finally, "In an age of declining membership, might the church in America grow once again not through any growth strategy, but through suffering and sacrifice as all churches have under such circumstances?"

How long? Not long, because no lie can live forever.
How long? Not long, because you still reap what you sow.
How Long? Not long, because the arm of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice. (King in Montgomery, March 1965)

The first Sunday of Advent

This weekend our congregation is focusing on the first Sunday of Advent. While celebrating with many contemporary elements, we also include some traditional pieces of Advent liturgy. Order of service: three songs ("Freedom Song," "Meet with Me," "Come Thou Long-Expected Jesus") and lighting of the Advent candle; more music ("We Will Exalt You, Oh Lord," "Emmanuel," "Shine On Us") interspersed with Psalm 80; a responsive prayer (see below); reading of Mark 13:24-37; a video: "Stay Awake" (see below);  sermon; response: "Forever Faithful."

Would you like a thoughtful little worship experience? Do the following: Read the responsive prayer below, read Mark 13:24-37, then watch the video below.

Peace as you watch for Christ this Advent season.

1) Responsive Prayer

Tim: As we keep awake for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, let us offer prayers to God who stirs up strength and comes to help us.

Christa: For the peace of the world, and for our unity in Christ.

Cong: Come, O Lord, and save us.

Tim: For our pastors, our leaders, and for all the people of this congregation, each holy in the site of God.

Cong: Come, O Lord, and save us.

Christa: For the church throughout the world and the faithful in every place.

Cong: Come, O Lord, and save us.

Tim: For the leaders of the nations and all in authority.

Cong: Come, O Lord, and save us.

Christa: For justice, peace, and freedom among peoples of the earth.

Cong: Come, O Lord, and save us.

Tim: For travelers, for the sick and the suffering, for the hungry and the oppressed, and for those in prison.

Cong: Come, O Lord, and save us.

Christa: Joining our voices with all the saints and angels of God, let us offer ourselves and one another to the living God as we await the coming of Christ.

Cong: O King of all the nations, only joy of every heart, the cornerstone and foundation on which we are one, come and save the creature you fashioned from clay, as we wait, as we look, and as we search for you this Christmas. Glory to you for ever. Amen.

Based on an Advent prayer at http://members.cox.net/oplater/IntercessionB-Advent1.pdf

2) Read Mark 13:24-37

3) Watch "Stay Awake"

 

 

Three U2 paper proposals

Have you heard about the first-ever U2 academic conference? It's called "The Hype and the Feedback" and it's taking place in New York City, May 13-15, 2009. The call for papers went out a while back, but I've been ill so I couldn't respond until recently (I've had hepatitis for the last three weeks and still recovering). I finally submitted three separate proposals. Here's hoping the committee will consider them even though they're late. I'm praying for grace over karma....

If interested you can click and read more about my proposals. If they don't get accepted maybe I can turn them into articles.

Proposal #1. A theology of engagement in the mission of U2

Proposal #2. Bono's love-hate relationship with the church: the long road from Dublin to Willow Creek

Proposal #3 (co-written with Jessica Mast). Teaching U2: the classroom as "gathering place"